Gorgeous
There
is great excitement in Castletown school.
An
English film company is shooting a film locally.
The film
producer arrives to hold an audition for the part of a twelve-year-old
girl. There are only eight girls in the sixth class.
Who will
be chosen?
Will it be
Zara, blonde, blue-eyed, and the most popular girl in the class?
Or Ann, also
blonde, also blue-eyed, but teased and ignored by the others?
Or will
it be one of the other six girls?
*
* *
The
girl who is chosen is in seventh heaven.
She has a
wonderful day filming.
Everyone on
the set thinks she is gorgeous!
But after a
while things start to go wrong, both in school and at home.
How will she cope?
Cora Harrison writes:
A
year or so ago when I was in some school, or library, there was a
group of sixth class girls who were very anxious for me to write a
modern novel. They were very clear about what they wanted: they wanted
a book which showed some of the problems of their age group - in fact,
I scribbled down a list when I was back in the car.
They wanted a book that showed bullying and teasing and getting
left out of the gang (that they felt was the worst thing to happen to
you) and a book that showed life as it was nowadays with problems
sometimes happening at home and at school at the very same time.
I suppose the ideas simmered in my head for a while and then I
remembered a film producer coming to my school and wanting to recruit
a girl from Year Six to play the part of one of the younger sisters in
the film 'The Darling Buds of May' and then I remembered a comment
from one of my teachers: 'This will make terrible trouble among the
Year Six girls!'
And then I wrote 'Gorgeous', a book which combines glamour and
excitement with depression and misery for the girl who is chosen to
play a part in a film.
Click here to read the first chapter
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